


in the mists of time we meet

by tsukinowa (kiki_bw)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Getting Together, Healing, M/M, No Volleyball, kind of, middle blocker love, pandemic-related angst, rarepair hell, translator tsukishima, vet hirugami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27147391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiki_bw/pseuds/tsukinowa
Summary: Tsukishima can’t guarantee anything, not with the way he is and the world is, and he doesn't know how much of his brain is still there and not lost to all the incessant stress, but he does know that he likes Hirugami. A lot.Tsukishima does what he does best and escapes to his grandmother's house in the Akita countryside in a bid to outrun all the covid angst in his life.He ends up gaining more than just some peace of mind.
Relationships: Hirugami Sachirou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	in the mists of time we meet

**Author's Note:**

> Contains covid-related angst and repercussions like losing a job (but no one gets infected or anything). Contains drinking.
> 
> This is something super self-indulgent that I wrote for finding small joys for myself amidst this hellhole that is a pandemic. This is, essentially, an AU, although there are some similarities to canon with respect to Hirugami’s history.
> 
> I really love HiruTsukki, so I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Obaa-chan/Baa-chan means grandma)

_Arriving shortly at the last stop, Akita. Akita. Please change here for…_

There’s an eerie kind of silence in the shinkansen despite the automated announcement. The seat next to Tsukishima is empty of course, but so are others around him. He sees a man sitting on the other end of the carriage gather his coat in preparation.

Tsukishima unhooks his mask and takes a quick sip of water before popping a mint into his mouth. There’s still a while to go before he reaches his grandma’s house in the countryside, and he’d rather not smell his own stale breath until then.

Akita station wears a deserted look, even more than Sendai had. Only four more people besides him alight from the train, and he hurries to the escalator to avoid the crowd.

Taking the bus is less than ideal, but there are fewer people than Tsukishima is used to seeing usually, no tourists making a racket and poring confusedly over their maps, just locals glancing around anxiously.

The bus ride is long and boring. He‘s stowed his bag between his legs and spread out over two seats, his long legs stretched out and grateful for some space for once.

As expected, he’s the only one to get down at his stop, and then he walks down the deserted road. The sun is high, but the countryside wind is still a bit nippy, and he huddles into his coat.

Obaa-chan’s house looks the same, even after all these years. The garden out front is still well-trimmed, shooting various flowery and herby smells at Tsukishima as he walks up to the door and knocks.

Almost instinctively, he steps back when the door slides open, and with good reason, because his grandma almost tackles him with a hug.

“Not yet, baa-chan,” he says, with a laugh, which is, no doubt, muffled by his mask. “I’ve traveled through public transport, let me have a bath first.”

It’s a relief to see that despite the chaos in the world, some things never change and his grandmother looks the same. He’s grown taller since the last time he’d been here, so she seems shorter, but she has the same wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, the same short, curly, white hair, and the same soft dimpled smile.

And the same stubbornness.

“Oh you,” she grumbles, but steps aside to let him in. “I have a strong body, didn’t get through so many years just like that you know.”

Tsukishima toes off his shoes in the genkan and gathers his socks in his hand. “I know, but it’s for me as much as it is for you.”

His grandma sighs. “I’ve drawn a bath for you already, the water should still be warm.”

Tsukishima’s _thanks_ gets lost in his grandma’s mumbles. 

“What times have we come to, it’s been years and I can’t even hug my lovely grandson, look at how thin you are, Kei, your clothes are just hanging off you! Do they not feed you at university? Is your mother not feeding you?”

Tsukishima fends off all her concerns on his way to the bathroom, promising to hug her extra hard once he’s clean and his clothes are in the wash. He washes his hands and gets rid of his clothes quickly, standing under the shower and scrubbing himself before soaking in the hot tub tiredly.

What times have we come to indeed.

\---

Tsukishima thought he’d had his life sorted for the next couple of years at least. He’d gotten a fantastic internship opportunity in his last semester at a small company who’d needed a translator, and was positive he’d receive a full-time position after graduation. The work was good, interesting, and something he could see himself doing in the future.

Then the world had turned upside down.

The company had offered him a job, but hadn’t quite managed to stay afloat in the tumultuous tide of economic despair that had followed, and he’d had to quit once they’d made it clear that they couldn’t promise him his stipend anymore, let alone employment.

And he understood, he really did. Who really had any control over the chaos that had unleashed? At least they’d been nice enough to contact him for some of the smaller projects they’d had.

His mother, worried for both her sons living all alone, had asked them to come home to their quiet Miyagi town, away from the large city of Sendai. Akiteru was working from home anyway, and this way, they could at least all be together. And Tsukishima loved his family, he really did, to the end of the world and back, but he was someone who needed time alone, where there wouldn’t be the constant sound of his brother on the phone and in meetings or the constant knocks on his door as his parents asked him what he was doing and was he too busy to run down and grab some groceries or help mum out a bit.

Tsukishima could pretend to be busy, could shut and lock his door, but the guilt wouldn’t let him, and that would mean that his parents would have to go out to the shops, and with their age and health and the uncle down the street ill with the virus, he really didn’t want them to.

Besides, he was hardly busy. He freelanced, sure, but that was neither here nor there, and he spent most of his time scouring websites and sending application emails, most of which got no replies.

Turned out that hiring a barely experienced translator was the last thing on people’s minds when faced with the inevitable truth of their mortality.

He’d completed his post-grad as a nameless pixelated face on a screen among fifty others, and that was the most excitement he’d gotten in half a year.

There’s a crazy sort of insanity that creeps on you, Tsukishima realized. He was someone who spent a lot of time inside his mind, but when you stew inside for much longer than usual with nothing much to do and having to consciously parse all your experiences with no end in sight, the little positivity which he usually held onto became more and more difficult to find. 

And as someone who needed time alone to recharge himself, Tsukishima had realized that as days went on, he’d begun losing more of himself. There were two sides of a coin: some people went crazy with having to stay indoors alone, others with having to stay indoors _with_ others. The whole staying indoors thing was much more fun when he used to do it of his own accord than when he was forced out of compulsion anyway.

So when his mother had mentioned his grandma, he’d jumped at the chance of something to do. None of them had been able to go to Akita to his grandmother before the emergency, and she was old enough to not be able to come down to Miyagi, but his mother had wanted to check on her in person. He could stay with her for some time and give himself a much-needed break, since traveling elsewhere hadn’t been possible with his freelance remunerations, low enough to make him feel grateful that he was living with his parents and not by himself at least.

Tsukishima had hardly been able to wait to get out of the hellhole his house had become for him.

\---

As expected, his grandmother refuses to let him quarantine himself, insisting that he’d taken all precautions and she was much healthier than he was, which Tsukishima couldn’t really refute. He doesn’t know where his grandmother gets her confidence from, but because he doesn’t have any in himself, he still makes his way down to the lone testing center in town and gets a quick test done the day after he reaches and a week later, both of which are negative.

Life in the Akita countryside is slow but easy, and straightforward.

His grandparents had long handed over their farms to someone else to care for, and obaa-chan spends most of her day puttering about the house and the garden and with the chickens, or in the market, or at the community hall, mask comically large on her small face.

She gives him space as his messed up pandemic sleep cycle keeps him awake late into the night, and sometimes he finds himself staying up long enough to help obaa-chan cook breakfast, waking up only in time for dinner.

It’s refreshing. It’s healing.

The town is just the way he remembers it, although he doesn’t step out much. There is a strange familiarity in his grandma’s house and its yard, the taste of his childhood summers strong in baa-chan’s cooking despite the winter fast approaching.

Tsukishima had expected that his grandma would ask more questions, talk more, insist on him not becoming nocturnal, but she does none of that, and it makes him wonder why she couldn’t have passed on those genes to his mother, who’d keep hovering even as he marathoned movies late into the night.

Maybe it is evident to his grandmother that he’s moping as he finishes the last assignment he has lined up.

She does drag him into helping her cook though, on the days that he can open his eyes in the day time, like she did when he was ten and curious about the magic his obaa-chan did to make scrumptious cakes and soft mochi, but it doesn’t feel like a chore, not like it did back home. He helps her vacuum the house despite her protests and sweeps the falling leaves in the yard and front garden one evening. And Tsukishima is not a great talker, she knows, but she is, and she fills the silence with stories of the town, of her friends, of the annoying middle-aged aunties, and of his childhood.

Tsukishima doesn’t know if it’s the change in monotony or if it’s his grandmother weaving her magic again, but the heaviness in his heart eases a bit.

Things change a week later.

Tsukishima has been trying to get his sleep schedule back on track and manages to wake up for a simple late lunch of soup and rice, when he hears loud laughter from beyond the yard. There’s a box of groceries in the genkan that wasn’t there last night, and it’s with thinly veiled curiosity that he puts on his outdoor slippers and steps out.

He shivers immediately and regrets not picking up a jacket at least. Living in the mountains of Miyagi all his life has never made him less averse to the cold.

Two figures are standing near the chicken pen, he notes, recognizing the shorter one immediately as his grandmother.

The other figure is crouched on the ground, a hen clutched firmly in a gloved hand, the other ruffling feathers here and there.

“Ah, you’re up early,” baa-chan says when she notices Tsukishima. “Here’s my elusive grandson, Sachirou-kun.”

The crouched figure puts the hen down and stands. “Your beloved Akiteru-kun, baa-chan?” he says, and Tsukishima can’t see his mouth with the mask, but he’s sure the stranger is smirking at him, and his eyes narrow.

His grandmother swats the tall man with a laugh. “It’s Kei-kun, my favorite grandson.”

Any other time Tsukishima would instantly call his baa-chan out for her double standards because she never says that to Akiteru’s face, but all his attention is occupied by the strange man who seems to smirk some more. There isn’t much of his face that Tsukishima can see under the mask, but his hair is long and a wavy brown, and he stands tall, almost as tall as Tsukishima.

“Pleasure to meet you, Kei-kun,” he replies with a small bow. “Hirugami Sachirou, I’m a vet. Came to check if Lady Momo here was doing well after she got caught in some wire last week.”

“Such a helpful, handsome young man,” obaa-chan pipes in, patting the vet’s back, with a pointed look at Tsukishima, and it only takes him a second to realize what she’s doing and he feels his face get hotter.

No, no, _no_. He is not about to get set up by his eighty-plus-year old _grandmother_ of all people.

Except he does. 

Obaa-chan convinces Hirugami to show Tsukishima around the small town like he doesn’t know it already, staunchly ignoring Tsukishima’s protests about how he doesn’t want to impose. But it doesn’t take much for Hirugami to insist that Tsukishima join him and his friends for drinks over the weekend, all invisible smug smiles accompanied by soft eye crinkles that make Tsukishima feel some way he hasn’t in a really long time.

And that’s how he finds himself seated in the largest izakaya in town, on a low table with four of Hirugami’s friends, only half-listening to the animated conversation happening.

“So,” Hirugami starts, downing half his mug of beer in one go. “What brings you to the lovely Akita countryside?”

Tsukishima clenches the ear of his highball mug tightly. Hakuba seems to be regaling the others loudly with some tales about his birthday. 

“Obaa-chan was alone,” he replies and ignores the eyebrow Hirugami raises almost incredulously because they both know it’s a lousy answer. His grandmother has lived alone for years, and she certainly needs no sitter.

But what else is he supposed to say, Tsukishima thinks, as he watches a drop of condensation run down his mug. 

“I needed the change,” he says instead, and maybe Hirugami sees the conflict in his tired eyes, or maybe he doesn’t, because he doesn’t push, but merely gathers their empty mugs and orders them refills.

Tsukishima loses track somewhere between his fifth and sixth drink. They’re not the only table getting louder as the night crawls on, but they're still the loudest, courtesy Hakuba and Bessho’s infinite supply of loud reenactments. Tsukishima isn’t quite drunk yet, tolerance high enough for the cheap watered-down whisky, and he’ll be fine to head home once he’s had a glass of water, but he’s certainly tipsy and still tossing back his highball, matching Hirugami drink for drink until the other gives up.

If there’s one thing Tsukishima has inherited from his grandmother through his mother, it’s her guts of steel. Physically. Metaphorically, obaa-chan would still beat them to the ground, with her signature determination only strengthened by time.

There’s a vague loss of inhibition which makes him laugh more, and he doesn’t even know when he’s rested his knee against Hirugami’s leg, sitting next to him, but he knows that Hirugami makes no move to shift it.

That’s the first sign.

The second is when Hirugami gives him a smoldering look and deliberately brushes his shoulder when they pass each other outside the one-stall toilet.

The third is when Hirugami not-so-subtly grabs his hand to stop him from putting his mask on and leaving when they all call it a night and say their goodbyes outside the izakaya.

The redundant last is when Hirugami pulls him to the back of the establishment, leans in, mutters a rough “Can I?”, while staring intently at Tsukishima’s lips, and crushes their mouths together when Tsukishima nods.

It isn’t pretty or soft. The stench of alcohol never left, and Tsukishima thinks he can taste the yakitori sauce when he licks into Hirugami’s mouth. It’s messy, it’s wetter than Tsukishima likes, they’re both tipsy enough to have less-than-perfect coordination, and they’re sticky from the humid air inside the izakaya but it doesn’t stop him from grabbing Hirugami’s hand and pulling him even closer.

Tsukishima’s back hits the wooden wall with a thud and he’s sure that they’ve startled someone inside the kitchen at the back, but he forgets all about it when Hirugami sucks insistently at his bottom lip.

He’s going to look wrecked when he gets back, and Tsukishima finds himself hoping that his obaa-chan doesn’t find him when he inevitably stumbles home.

There’s an aborted moan when their hips brush as they end up pressed closer than appropriate in a public space, and that’s the cue for Hirugami to release his hand clutched in Tsukishima’s hair to take a deep breath.

It’s electrifying to know that Hirugami wants this just as much as Tsukishima does.

“Dinner,” Hirugami breathes against his lips, as Tsukishima presses kisses onto the corners of his mouth. “Come over for dinner tomorrow. I’ll cook for us.”

Tsukishima hesitates. He isn’t sure what this is supposed to be, this wild wild whirlwind, but dinner wouldn't be on the cards if this was to be purely physical, and even his drunk brain knows that he wants more than just the warmth of a body.

“You make your two brain cells work so hard,” Hirugami whispers deep into his ear as he snakes kisses down Tsukishima’s jaw. “Just dinner first. Then we’ll figure out the rest.”

And Tsukishima bites Hirugami’s ear lobe in retaliation, not quite managing to swallow his yelp with his mouth and tongue.

When they finally unglue themselves, Hirugami sends him off with the softest kiss of the night and the softest smile, and Tsukishima walks home feeling like he’s drunk on something other than all the alcohol he’s had. He slinks inside silently, hyper-aware of his phone in his pocket with Hirugami’s number in it.

\---

The next day is uneventful.

Tsukishima had had enough sense to guzzle lots of water after returning and was spared by any hangovers. He wakes up only in time for lunch, and lounges around for the rest of the afternoon, before spending a frankly ridiculous amount of time in choosing the best clothes out of the meager number he’s brought along.

He chooses to ignore the knowing grin his grandmother shoots him when he tells her he’d be going out and would probably come back late as he steps outside, comfortably warm in his oversized sweater and coat, clutching a box of cakes she’d pressed into his hands.

The walk is long, but it isn’t very cold, and Tsukishima enjoys it.

It isn’t quite the peak of autumn yet, despite the chill slowly settling in, but some of the trees have changed their colors already, littering the roads with red and yellow. It is still quite a sight, and the sky is clear enough for Tsukishima to be able to see the green-red-yellow-brown dotted hills in the distance in the light of the setting sun.

Hirugami’s house is large, larger than obaa-chan’s, and is surrounded by a wooden fence.

Hirugami had asked him to shoot a message when he reached the gate, and he understands why, when as Hirugami exits through the sliding door and jogs to open the gate, he is followed by what seems like a dozen dogs.

Eight, Tsukishima counts quickly. Hirugami has eight corgis.

Some of the incredulity he’s feeling must be showing on his face, because Hirugami smiles sheepishly before asking Tsukishima through the gate, “Sorry I forgot to mention and they escaped before I could shut the door. Any dog allergies or phobias?”

Tsukishima shakes his head silently and Hirugami sighs in relief. “Oh good--no Tomo, wait there, wait, good girl.”

He opens the gate wide enough for Tsukishima to slip in, but the dogs are well-trained and don’t step a foot near him as Hirugami leads him through the yard to the house.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Tsukishima mutters, slipping out of his shoes and almost losing his balance as eight muscled bodies brush past him.

“Just put your shoes on the shelf there,” Hirugami says, placing his own slippers in a square hole. “They love chewing on them sometimes.”

Tsukishima thinks that he’s still half-dreaming when they enter what he presumes is the living room, and sees that all of the dogs are waiting for them in front of the couch, tongues lolling out, smiles on and tails wagging happily.

“You don’t have to, and I’ll make sure they leave you alone if you don’t, but do you wanna let them get to know you?” Hirugami asks, taking Tsukishima’s coat while checking him out blatantly.

And Tsukishima takes one look at the eager dogs, makes the mistake of looking them in the eye, and damn if even the most heartless man would be able to deny them.

So he sits down like Hirugami tells him to, and holds his hands out for the dogs to sniff.

“Why eight?” he asks out of curiosity, when the dogs begin sniffing him down and he’s sure that they won’t bowl him over.

“I had two, found more, then they had puppies,” Hirugami shrugs. “My neighbor comes to watch over them while I’m at work.”

It takes an embarrassingly long time for them to get to dinner. The dogs won’t leave Tsukishima alone, not that he'd complain, but they’re intent on climbing him and licking every inch of his face until he gives up and lies down on the floor. They are also cutely insistent on getting pets, and he finds himself running his hands all over their soft fur, and he’s pretty sure that Hirugami has snuck in a couple of pictures on his phone.

Finally, after most of the dogs get tired of him, Hirugami leads Tsukishima to the kitchen for dinner. As it turns out, Hirugami is not a bad cook at all, and he enjoys the simple meal.

Tsukishima struggles through the small talk in the beginning, but Hirugami takes it in his stride, coaxing grudging compliments about his cooking and his dogs from Tsukishima’s not-entirely-unwilling lips.

And Tsukishima isn’t a great talker, but he listens, and he learns how Hirugami knows the weight of expectations all too well, how he cut volleyball out of his life because it didn’t give him the same pleasure as it gave his siblings, how he still wonders at times, but time has healed him, and he knows he’s made the right decisions.

Then, when Hirugami has refilled the dogs’ water and ushered them all to bed in their crates in the room nearest to the backyard, he joins Tsukishima on the couch with cans of post-dinner beer, taking a seat right beside him. Tsukishima learns how Hirugami had escaped to Akita after finishing veterinary school in a bid to search for fresh beginnings and this small town and its people had then become home.

Tsukishima shares little, because he’s still on a precipice, but he lets himself fall when Hirugami pulls him into a searing kiss. They are much better at it this time, without the tipsiness, and he soon finds himself half on Hirugami’s lap, one thigh over his and the other folded under himself, Hirugami’s hands hot on his hips and steadily traveling downward.

He thanks his stars that Hirugami is tall enough that Tsukishima doesn’t almost break his neck while pressing wet kisses down Hirugami’s neck, drawing out a loud moan. Hirugami pulls Tsukishima onto his lap almost too easily, and it makes Tsukishima get harder, as he runs his hands up Hirugami’s strong arms.

Later, Tsukishima loses himself in the depth of Hirugami’s eyes as they both work each other, breaths heavy in the air, but he can’t seem to find it in himself to worry much about falling.

The fall hits all of a sudden though, when Hirugami has tossed the wad of used tissues carelessly on the low table to pick up later and gives Tsukishima the softest of kisses again, whispering, “Stay.”

Tsukishima freezes.

He’d knowingly jumped off the cliff and into the unknown, but his heart is thundering now. He thought he'd been prepared, he’d wanted, he still wanted to see where this would go, and he’d decided that he’d put one step at a time, but this was a stride too long for him right now.

So Tsukishima does what he does best. He runs.

He mutters an excuse about baa-chan being alone, which they both know is flimsy, but Hirugami lets him have it, helping him into his coat when he hurries to the door.

He’s about to slide the door open and escape, when Hirugami grabs his hands firmly and makes him turn around.

“I like you, Kei-kun,” he says, and Tsukishima almost looks him in the eye with his first name sounding so sweet rolling off Hirugami’s tongue, with none of the teasing smirkiness that was there the first time he’d said it. But he already feels like someone has yanked the rug under his feet and he doesn’t need to feel like he’s falling any further, not right now.

“You don’t have to tell me anything right now,” Hirugami continues, with a soft smile now. His eyes don’t crinkle like they usually do though. “I think you like me too, but it’s ok even if you don’t. You can take your time, I can wait for a bit. But I want you to know that I like you.”

And Tsukishima is faced yet again with the biggest truth he’s known all along: that he is a certified coward.

“Text me,” Hirugami says, and Tsukishima manages a tight nod in response.

Then he is striding out the gate and down the road home, chilly air nipping his face unforgivingly, and feet stomping on the fallen autumn leaves without care.

\---

Tsukishima is no stranger to the feeling of being on a precipice when it comes to developing relationships with others, especially romantic ones. He usually hovers for the longest time on that edge, thinking with his brain for matters of the heart, unsure whether or not to take a leap of faith and let himself feel more for someone.

Of course, there are times when it’s just physical, like that one hookup at his second uni party that had gone on for the better part of a year, no strings attached.

It had been the easiest to take the fall with Yamaguchi, as fumbling teenagers and fumbling first kisses and experiments, before they’d both decided that they were better off as best friends. It hadn’t been that easy with that senior from another school for whom Tsukishima had fallen hard and fast, nor with that junior whose heart he’d broken when he’d graduated high school and left for university.

But nothing had felt like this. Tsukishima almost feels like he’s a puppet whose strings have been cut and been told that has free will and can do as he pleases now, and it’s scarier than ever to be back on that precipice and to feel that he’d want to make the jump just to see where it would lead.

And Tsukishima knows, that this is the most vulnerable he’s ever felt in life, the bottomless pit under his feet only gaping wider the more he worries about his future, and this is where his escapist nature would strike again, just like it did tonight, but after more than half a year, Tsukishima’s just tired of all the running and all the worrying.

There is, after all, nowhere that he can run to from himself.

He knows it’s too soon, too fast, probably too impulsive than what is typical of him, but Hirugami feels solid. He feels present. He’s here and real, and Tsukishima wants him, wavy hair and sweet smiles and eight dogs and all. He wanted to stay tonight, and he’d want to again, if Hirugami would ask a second time and all the times that follow. 

And Tsukishima can’t guarantee anything, not about his future nor how things would turn out with Hirugami, not with the way he is and the world is, and he doesn't know how much of his brain is still there and not lost to all the incessant stress, but he does know that he likes Hirugami. A lot.

And that he’d like to take that leap of faith with him.

\---

He doesn’t sleep.

He brings his blankets to the couch in the living room, folds himself uncomfortably into it, and thinks, not for the first time, what he really wants from life.

He wants to not feel helpless when he realizes it’s October already in a year that he’s barely lived. He wants that ugly feeling to go away, the one that raises its head when he thinks about how Akiteru, working in the field of finance unlike Tsukishima, had managed to change his job to a better one in the middle of a fucking pandemic while there he was, struggling and earning peanut shells. He wants to not be selfish and feel guilty for wanting space, for wanting to be away from his family who have been nothing but supportive and understanding. He wants the impending sense of doom that he’s trying to outrun to go away, to know how long this would last and when this would all end.

He’d been so clear before the pandemic had struck, and he’d been caught off-guard, but everyone had, and who made contingency plans for something like this anyway? Things had been bound to change, but he hadn’t realized how much and how long they’d remain changed.

Tsukishima didn’t do well with unplanned change.

And here was some more change he hadn’t planned for, and he’d thought that maybe he’d be too overwhelmed and that would make him keep his distance, but he’d conflictingly wanted this change. He did like Hirugami, and knowing now that Hirugami liked him too should have made him happy, but it was stifled by the vague sense of terror that had become all too familiar to him in the past months.

Footsteps make their way across the wooden floor. Tsukishima bolts upright.

His grandmother walks across, wrapped in a blanket, and opens the window that leads out into the yard, throwing out a hand beckoning him.

When Tsukishima finds his glasses and walks out into the cold night, she is already seated on the edge of the engawa, and pats the space beside her. He sits silently, but she throws an edge of her large blanket over him and Tsukishima finds himself with his head in her lap, her bony fingers running soothingly through his curls.

“You youngsters these days,” she begins lovingly. “Always in such a hurry.”

Tsukishima cranes his neck to look at her when she pulls at his hair softly. The wrinkles on her face become more prominent as she smiles.

“Sometimes, you need to stop and look around,” she continues. “Look up.”

The moon is full, and high in the sky, and beautiful, and Tsukishima realizes that he’d missed it entirely when he’d been outside.

“Some things will never change, dear,” baa-chan says, eyes now sharp and on Tsukishima. “The sun will always set and the moon will rise. Even with the world in disarray.”

Tsukishima looks away. Of course, she knew, she knew how much he was struggling even without him having to say anything.

“I know my words won’t change the situation,” she tells him. “But what matters is what you’ll do of it. Will you give up, or will you keep fighting until you win?”

And as Tsukishima burrows his head in her lap, he feels like he’s eight again, and it’s the end of summer, so he has to go back to Miyagi, but he doesn’t want to leave his obaa-chan alone. “It’s not easy,” he says, almost petulantly.

“Of course it’s not,” she replies. “Most things that are worth something aren’t, but you are strong Kei, even when you’re scared. Just trust yourself more, give it time, and keep fighting.”

Baa-chan’s hand feels the same as it did years ago, only that it trembles more now as she pats his head and runs through his hair softly, and Tsukishima wishes that he was eight again, with no care in the world and no burdens to bear.

He pretends that the tears running down his face and seeping into the blanket are tricks of the moonlight. His grandmother says nothing.

Patience, Tsukishima thinks. It isn’t his strongest suit, but he will have to have it now, and keep trusting that he’ll be alright one day. That one day, he’ll be less scared of everything. 

That he’d be brave enough to fly off that precipice.

\---

The next morning, Tsukishima is up early. He makes his way down to Hirugami’s house again, armed this time with an assortment of side dishes.

The bolt of the gate isn’t too hard to jiggle open from the outside, and Tsukishima quickly walks up to the door, knocking determinedly, only to receive a loud volley of barks in reply.

The door slides open slowly and Hirugami stands there, stunned for a few seconds too long until he lets Tsukishima in silently. Tsukishima sees the shock on Hirugami’s face morph into something unknown.

It doesn’t seem like he has slept much either, hair still tousled and eyes still dark and red like he’d been rubbing them.

“Did you forget--”, Hirugami says.

“I’m not good at this sort of thing,” Tsukishima interrupts him.

There’s a pause where he forces himself not to look away from Hirugami’s probing eyes, drawing his strength, before Hirugami replies softly, “I’m not either.”

“Last night,” Tsukishima breaks off, then takes a deep breath. “I don’t know where this will take us,” he continues determinedly, holding a hand up to stop Hirugami from interrupting again. “But I wanted to. I want to. Even if it takes us nowhere.”

And there it is, out in the open, Tsukishima has said it, he _said_ it, and all he can do is watch as Hirugami steps closer, takes the bag from his hands and puts it somewhere, and takes both of Tsukishima’s hands into his own.

“I don’t mind going nowhere if it’s with you,” he says, and his smile is close, he is close, so close, but Tsukishima has one more thing to say.

“I like you,” he almost whispers, cheeks growing hotter, and then are lips on his, soft and insistent, and he could care less about the shoe rack behind him digging uncomfortably into the back of his thighs, his mind a happy cacophony of incoherent screeching at how Hirugami wraps a warm hand over his back.

Patience, he thinks, as he reaches a hand around Hirugami’s neck and pulls him closer and closer. He’ll get there.

For now, it’s not a flight, but it is a start.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for Hirugami to have eight welsh corgis came from  this youtube channel  I love.
> 
> Take care, everyone! Wear a mask (IT GOES OVER YOUR NOSE!) and stay sane!
> 
> Come yell about hq with me on my brand new twitter! [@_tsukinowa ](https://twitter.com/_tsukinowa?s=09)


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